Christine Rostant: Cancer experience showed me how much I am loved

It came to her in a vision.

One night, as she was sleeping, Christine Rostant, 58, heard a male voice saying she had a lump in her breast. However, with her busy schedule, she forgot about it and continued about the business of living.

Three days later, she remembered, took her right hand, put it on her left breast and immediately felt the lump. The next morning, she went to San Fernando General Hospital and did a mammogram and a sonogram. There she was told it was not cancer but fat that had built up and would be absorbed into her body naturally.

However, on February 5, 2009, she fell at work at hit her breast. It started to hurt and over the next few weeks it swelled to the size of a lime. No longer able to stand the pain, she visited a private doctor who performed a biopsy on the lump. On April 9 she was informed that she had Stage II cancer and it was aggressive because of the trauma to her breast.

On the advice of a friend who was visiting the country, she immediately bought a ticket to the United States and was in Massachusetts the very next day. “My friend said, ‘I would carry you back with me to have this thing sorted out.’ We had a strong bond.”

Rostant told WMN when she got the news she was cool and calm, and the only time she cried was when she told her mother of her diagnosis. Her only concern was for her children, who where adults by that time. “I was worried in the sense that, if I died I didn’t know how my children would have took it and how they would have survived. By the time I reached the States, death was the furthest thing from my mind. I was just thinking about getting well and going back home.”

The plan was to pretend she knew nothing about the cancer and just visit the hospital with the complaint of pain in her breast. “We spent the whole day. They were just pumping me with morphine because of the pain. And when I threw up they decided to keep me for two days. They discovered the lump on their own.”

There, she did another sonogram, mammogram, biopsy, and a variety of blood tests – all on the same day. As an outpatient she then did chemotherapy, a mastectomy on August 26, and after she recovered, radiation.

“God was on my side for me to get through. When I was in the hospital in the States a lot of people came to visit me to help me work out insurance and financing for all the treatment. They told me not to worry, that they would take care of me before I go back home. And they approved everything.”

That was not the only way she was fortunate.

Rostant said chemotherapy was easy for her, that only the first dose had any negative effect. She was nauseated for five days and could not eat anything. After that, she had no side effects other than her dreadlocks, eyelashes and eyebrows falling out, and she lost five pounds. In fact, when she returned to TT after nine months, everyone exclaimed that she did not look sick at all.

She said the experience helped her discover how much she was loved.

For example, a male friend was with her for the diagnosis and he and his family supported her from afar throughout the treatment and up to this day. She also received many phone calls from concerned family and friends, was told about people who cried when they heard about her diagnosis, and on her return, the expressions of love she received was overwhelming.

However, her relationship with the friend who took her to the US became strained and did not survive the experience. Rostant was so upset about it at the time that she had to get counselling, but eventually she forgave her friend.

In addition to forgiveness, she said her experience with cancer taught her not to worry about “the little things” and to enjoy life as much as possible which meant that she now travels as often as she can.